Towards Ecstasy
by MapleleafCameo
Summary: An angel falls to earth. A man finds him. wingfic, johnlock, Rated M
1. Better Than

**A/N: Inspired by the music of Sarah McLachlan**

**Thanks mattsloved1 for checking it out**

**Don't own**

**This will be a series of chapters in no particular order**

Better Than

"Really? Better than ice cream? It's better than that, is it?" A slight sarcastic edge to the response but filled with humour rather than scorn.

"Oh, yes! You know how ice cream slides in your mouth and cools your tongue, the flavour bursts and you kind of hold it there, while it melts and flows, trickling down your throat? Better than that." A chuckle, almost a giggle, dirty and low. A perfect eyebrow, arched at him. "You can shut it, thanks. I know how it sounds. It's better than anything else that I've tried. Better than chocolate." A hand dragged along a pale expanse of moonlight skin. Breath drawn in and a huff of laughter as the edge of a long black feather had swept along his bare flesh. A gasp. "That tickles."

Rich, sable laughter, joined in, entwined around the other's audible mirth and rang through the room. A smile, sly and knowing, broke out on the full mouth. "I'd say sorry but…"

"You're not, you never are. Git." Affection in the tone of his reply, "How about you? Your turn."

"Your love, John, wonderful, exquisite, brilliant John, is better than dust motes settling on a bookshelf after dancing through the air in the sunlight. It's better than galaxies colliding, absorbing one into another, creating new realities. It is better than flying through the clouds during a rainstorm, with lightning thundering loud in my veins. It is better than…"

"A triple murder in a locked room?" Navy eyes crinkled, and thin, mobile lips caressed and travelled across a long neck. He murmured into the skin. "You can't remember the names of the planets in the solar system, but comparing it to galaxies, huh?"

"John, I hold the names of a multitude of heavenly bodies in my head. I've seen the birth of a trillion planets. I can't recall them all at the same time. Besides, you, you are…"

"Yes?"

"The stars were where I was born, where I came into being, but you, you are my home now. I don't need to know the names of the planets."

Silence and wonder, in a long pause. "And I compared it to ice cream. God, Sherlock, I can't…" a hand through ink-dark curls, down his neck, across muscular shoulders and touched the silky skin were it melded into the downy feathers at the base of Sherlock's broad strong wings. A tremor flowed through the feathers and the wings trembled as short, clever hands ran through, sorted them, calmed them.

"Don't…Oh! That's…"

"Oh I'm sorry! Too much?"

"No, don't stop. Oh yes, John! Yes." His head lowered and leaned into John's shoulder. "You have no idea how erotic, how sensual that is. I, oh fuck, I can't…"

"Shh, here, let me…" His other hand snaked down and stroked the swollen velvet and silk skin, warm and heavy between the long legs, the tip wet. His thumb flicked and smoothed the head, playing with the slit. The wings, which had stilled momentarily, trembled again, feathers ruffled as the other hand continued to stroke them.

Hands braced on either side of John's head, Sherlock's head was still down, mouth nuzzling the golden skin underneath. He moved his hips slowly, carnally. John took both of them in hand and another shudder wracked the long, lean frame, hovered above him. Wings, confined in the small space of the bedroom, swept out and flapped, stirred the air, causing scattered papers to shift and move.

Spoken low, "Easy. I've got you."

"No John, I have you." Wings beat, once, and then tempered, curtaining the bed, and blocked their bodies from the unseen. The pace of the two increased, slick and sweat, skin slid together. Long arms wrapped around John's shorter torso, held him, clutched. Respiration escalated in time with the strokes. In a heartbeat the two joined in a dance older than the stars that were Sherlock's home. Crashing together and then falling, falling, slowly, the large coal black wings, dark and glossy, steadied them.

All was quiet in the room except for the breathing and the ripple of feathers. Hands, marvellous hands stroked quivering flesh, stilled the tremors. He was pulled down and languid kisses continued.

A lazy head lifted and intense eyes, celestial hued, swept the beloved face. John smiled, his own eyes warm and ocean blue, those hands of his came back up to the tops of the wings. "Why?" he asked.

"Why what?"

"Why me?"

"You are everything."


	2. The One to Fall

At the time it had seemed like basically a sound idea. The plausibility of success was high. After all, others had done it and survived.

Lying on the ground with his face half in a puddle, bits of dirt scoring his skin and a warm liquid trickling down from his forehead made that idea seemed foolish.

Foolish and painful.

Extremely painful.

He groaned and tried to leverage himself up off of the ground but he had lost most of his strength. He couldn't remember when he had felt so weak. Not in millennia.

Eyes closed, for an attempt to open them moments before had caused his vision to swim. Instead he continued to catalogue every bruise and scrap. Fortunately there did not seem to be anything broken. Even his wings felt to be intact, although the left felt wrenched.

An uncomfortable sensation crawled across his skin, one he'd never really felt before. Small bumps were breaking out all over the surface and he was shivering.

_Ah, cold. I am cold._

It was a different sensation from the cold of space, the cold of the life he'd left behind where the ennui was driving him mad.

A heavy sigh and a loss of consciousness, the weight of gravity, the world and sin pulled him, held him, tugged him to the ground. The bliss of oblivion didn't stay with him long.

There was a soft murmuring in his ear and warmth spread over his lower torso as something soft was spread over his lower back and legs. Hands were checking various places on his body, also warm, firm and expert. The voice, exuded calmness, patience, something about the voice, something familiar, comforting, was repeating similar phrases, over and over. He concentrated with some difficulty, trying to make sense of the words. The voice spoke English. He knew English but it seemed to have been knocked out of that part of his head.

"Can you hear me? Do you know your name?"

A mouth, sore and battered, creaked open and a muffled and garbled sound was produced.

"Shur…"

He licked his lips and tried again.

"Sh'loch…Sherlock."

"Can you tell me what happened?"

To speak of his journey was impossible, something a frail human mind would not understand, could not comprehend. To translate what was experienced within his senses into simple human terms, it would come out all muddled. How was one to explain the cacophony of light and the flavour of sound? The wonder and brilliance of travelling across the interval of space, through the rage of stars to land here, in this particular puddle, in this godless human city on a insignificant island. All because of a desire to not feel bored and because…

Because he was curious.

"I've called for an ambulance. They should be here soon."

Panic swam through the miasma of his pain and discomfort.

"No!"

"You were badly injured. Were you mugged?"

"No! No ambulance. Help me! Help me up!"

The voice took on an edge of command, that even the upper hierarchies might have stopped to listen to or at least take notice.

"Stay still. Try not to move. You are going to a hospital and you are getting checked out."

Lifting his head off the ground, he squinted to look to see who had been speaking. An unremarkable person knelt at his side. He must have been uncomfortable, sitting there on the cold damp ground, but it didn't seem to be bothering him. Sherlock, despite the pain, stretched his mind toward him.

He felt it. The inability to translate what he saw in this man's mind, the same way he was unable to translate the journey between the heavens. Hidden inside him, there were so many puzzles, so many contradictions, such brightness, such darkness. Anger and despair hovered on the surface, but the depth of sensitivity and joy of life were buried deep down, way down under the scars and hurt. This, this was what made his relinquishment so much sweeter.

"Who are you?" he muttered.

"My name is John. I'm a doctor and I'm here to help."

John

Such a simple name. Such a complex man.

Worth falling for.

oOo

John was fucking tired. So tired. The work was done for another day and he just wanted to get home, shove some food into his mouth and sleep for a week.

The night was darker than it should have been. It was London, for god sake's, and the lights from the streetlamps and shops should have illuminated everything around him, but there seemed to be a drain on the light. In the gloom of the night, he started to cross the street when a spectacular streak of lightening ignited the sky. It had multiple forks and crashed through the atmosphere in a fierce and glorious display.

He paused, waiting for the inevitable boom and reverberation from the trailing thunder, but it never came. Instead the ground shook, ever so faintly, as if from an impact tremor or the negligent shrug of a sleeping giant. His eyes still held the afterimage and he blinked rapidly trying to clear the glowing trail from his sight. Once he had decreased it sufficiently, he continued to make his way home. He hadn't gone far when he saw something lying on the pavement up ahead. A few more steps and he could make out a huddled shape upon the ground. A person. _Poor bugger, must have been mugged._ He palmed his phone, kept it at the ready to phone for an ambulance and cautiously knelt beside the fallen man.

The man was naked and he appeared to be shivering. A cursory check and a gentle touch for a pulse. Breath filled the lungs of the form beside him and the beat of the heart was strong and sure.

The jacket John was wearing was removed and draped over the still figure. As he moved the coat to cover him, there was an odd shift in the light in the space above the man's back. He squinted and rubbed his eyes. For a moment he thought he saw wings, great, black wings, but with the undulation of stars woven in the feathers. The jacket wouldn't go up further than the waist. He shrugged, believing he was more tired than he had originally thought.

He swiftly dialed 999. Speaking to the answering voice, he gave his credentials and requested an ambulance.

The attempt to awaken the man met with resistance at first. After a few minutes of groans and weird mumblings, his voice, although cracked and dry sounding, spoke in tones, which carried through the air and seemed to arrive in John's chest. Even in pain there was something magical about the way he spoke. But it was when the man, opened his eyes, that John began to believe that perhaps the wings weren't the imaginings of an exhausted mind, for like them the cosmos swirled in the depths of the crystal eyes and although it was dark on this street, he was able to see their colour clearly. Not sure what to make of this, he waited with the man, kept him talking, heard his name, Sherlock. When the ambulance came, he went with him to the hospital. He wondered when the stretcher was brought forward how wings could fit on it, but the paramedics were able to transfer him onto his back with no problems and he began to doubt once more.

Hours later, not even thinking about going home to a lonely bedsit, he waited in the darkened room while Sherlock slumbered peacefully. He reached out and carefully lifted the pale hand to check the pulse again. Long fingers hung limply and he carefully replaced it on the bed.

John looked at the face, at the ebony curls scattered on the pristine pillows, eyes roving under closed lids, dreaming of impossibilities, perhaps. In the light from the window, in the manmade gleam from the street, he could see the shadow of wings on the wall, stretched out impossibly, as if the bed was not solid and they reached down and swept along the floor, hidden and invisible, but there all the same. Looking carefully between the layers and molecules of space, not quite knowing how he did it, John could make out a singular dark feather, alone and adrift on the hospital floor. He bent down, picked it up. He stroked along the shaft and smooth the bent and jumbled quill. The touch of the feather, the weight of its reality crashed though him and he yielded to its veracity.

And with that touch, with that surrender, he knew that he had begun to fall.


End file.
